


When The Light Came Through

by losttothesea



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e13 Savoureux, Everyone Is Alive, First Kiss, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Mid-Canon, Murder Husbands, Pet Names, Protective Hannibal Lecter, So much kissing, Someone Help Will Graham, Someone Helps Will Graham, Will Graham Knows, Will Graham Loves Hannibal Lecter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25733602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/losttothesea/pseuds/losttothesea
Summary: Will escapes custody and runs to Hannibal. They don't go to Minnesota.(Canon divergence starting mid-"Savoureux")
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 34
Kudos: 300





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _You were a vision in the morning when the light came through  
>  I know I’ve only felt religion when I’ve lied with you…  
> You’re dripping like a saturated sunrise  
> You’re spilling like an overflowing sink  
> You’re ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece_  
> —Halsey, "Colors"

“Hello, Will.”

Will tips his head back against the bookshelf. For a moment he thinks, _That would be enough_. Just to hear Hannibal say his name one more time. He could die right here, sitting on the floor in a prison jumpsuit, one half-broken hand cradled in the other. He could die right here, right now, close his eyes and let the black waves finally take him, after hearing Hannibal say his name one last time.

Then Hannibal says his name again, with slightly more force, and Will’s eyes snap open. When had he closed them? Or had he only thought about closing them?

“Tell me, Will, how are you feeling?”

The answer scrapes its way out of his mouth before he’s fully conscious of it. “Self-aware.”

Hannibal angles his gaze upwards to where Will is sitting, and Will finds himself struggling to meet those clear, steady eyes. “You frightened Alana Bloom.”

Will almost laughs. “She’s confused about who I am. Which I can relate to.” He swallows hard and forces himself to glance down at Hannibal. “Are _you_ confused about who I am?”

A brief flash of something strange in Hannibal’s face. “No, Will. I have always known precisely who you are.”

“Really?” Will lets out a loose, shaky breath. “Because that’s more than I can say for myself right now.”

“Perhaps that’s what friendship is, then. Saying for the other what they cannot say for themselves.”

“And what else do you have to _say_ for me, Hannibal?”

“First, Will, I would have you come down from there and take your customary seat across from me. I fear a neck ache if we carry on like this for much longer.”

Somewhere in the dizzy depths of Will’s mind an odd note sounds: Hannibal admitting the possibility of pain. Will pops aspirin by the jittery handful but finds it impossible to envision Hannibal ever requiring something so mundane as an over-the-counter painkiller. Perhaps that’s also friendship, then, Will thinks woozily. Reminding the other of our own humanity. Our own fragility. Our own capacity to hurt.

He blinks rapidly, realizes he’s been lost in his own head and that Hannibal is waiting for him to respond. Another blink and Will returns to himself in his usual chair across from Hannibal, with no memory of how he got to the first level of the office or, indeed, how long he’s been there. That should worry him, he knows, but the worry feels so very distant compared to the solidity of Hannibal eight feet away from him. The strength of him, the realness of him. Will can no longer be certain of what is real but in this moment he knows that _Hannibal_ is—perhaps realer than anything has ever been—and he clings to that like a rock in a roaring ocean. 

“You have encephalitis, Will,” Hannibal says, abruptly and without preamble. There is a disconcerting urgency behind his words, not entirely concealed and wholly out of character, as if the exquisitely measured Hannibal has to say this as quickly as possible or not at all. “The right hemisphere of your brain is inflamed. Has been for quite some time.”

It only takes Will one jagged heartbeat. “‘A ship on the bottle,’” he says, voice shaky but mind, in this precise moment, excruciatingly clear. In a roiling sea of memories, that one has never wavered: the heat of Hannibal’s body behind him, the sudden kick of Will’s heart in his chest, the almost imperceptible stir of air as Hannibal angled his face towards Will’s neck and breathed him in. _Did you just smell me?_

One corner of Hannibal’s lush mouth lifts slightly. “Very good, Will. I’m happy to see your powers of perception are as keen as ever, despite all that you have been through.”

“You’ve known for that long—” Will's jaw is clenching so hard it’s nearly impossible to form audible words. “You’ve known for that long and you didn’t tell me?” He tries to laugh but can only manage a grimace. " _Why_?"

Another Hannibal microexpression. Had it been anyone but Hannibal, Will might have thought he looked almost chastened. But it is Hannibal—somehow it is always Hannibal—and in an instant Will is fixed with a much more familiar level stare. Eyes shining almost golden, Hannibal cants his head briefly to one side: the Hannibal version of a shrug.

“I suppose, Will, you could say I had a pro—”

“Professional curiosity about me,” Will finishes bitterly. He sees Hannibal’s face quirk oddly at the interruption but barrels onward, too wound up now to stop. “That’s the second time I’ve heard that from someone I—”

Hannibal’s turn to interrupt. “Someone you what, Will?” 

This punctures Will like a balloon, all his anger and anxiety and self-righteousness leaking out of him, leaving him hollow. “Someone I...someone I was trying to—to have a...to be, uh, friends with,” he finishes, the words limp.

The barest twitch of a smile from Hannibal. “Alana Bloom and I do indeed share some...subjects of interest. Tell me, Will, why didn’t you run to her?”

“I—” Will realizes he has no answer for this because the thought of running to anyone else had simply never occurred to him. His internal compass may be drowning, shattering, going up in flames, but it has only ever pointed to Hannibal. 

Hannibal nods slightly, reacting to a thought Will has not yet voiced. Then in one swift motion he stands, as if he has suddenly decided something. "We must see to that hand, Will," he says. "You've borrowed a trick from our old friend Abel Gideon."

Will does manage a laugh this time, though it is dry and rough and feels like smoke in his chest. "Benefits of empathizing with criminals."

Hannibal laughs too, short and low. "So resourceful, this little wandering lamb." And then he bends to kneel before Will's chair.

Hannibal takes Will's crooked hand in one of his, lifting the other to smooth cool fingers across Will's blazing forehead like a benediction. The unexpected immediacy of this, of Hannibal touching him, of Hannibal at Will's feet—not begging for mercy as Will had sometimes dreamt of, but _delivering_ mercy—makes Will's head swim. He can hear the roar of waves pounding in his ears, his ribcage. Hannibal as Will's deliverance. 

"Let me take you home, Will," Hannibal says, so quietly Will can barely hear him over the thrum of the ocean in his bones.

"I can't go—they'll—can't be—my house—" Will chokes on his own unfinished sentences.

"Of course not," Hannibal soothes, hands still on him. "I will take you to mine."

This is all Will wants, all Will has ever wanted: Hannibal the fallen angel, lifting him in his arms and carrying him home.

But this is also what Will is most terrified of: Hannibal the risen devil, lifting him in his arms and stealing him away.

“I—I can’t—I mean, uh...the dogs—” he stammers.

“Alana has the dogs,” Hannibal reminds him, voice still soft. “Come, my lost lamb. Allow me to take care of you.”

“The doctor who cares for himself has a fool for a patient,” Will says faintly, his vision blurring in and out like waves on the shore. “Alana...Alana told me that.”

“But I am not caring for myself, Will. I am caring for you.” Hannibal gently replaces Will's hand in his lap and lifts both of his own to cup Will's face. 

“Hannibal,” Will grits out, already on fire and now set unbearably alight by Hannibal’s touch. “Wouldn’t you say those are the same thing?”

Then there is only darkness.

And then, much later, there is light.


	2. Chapter 2

Will dreams of the river. 

He stands in it, naked and nearly up to his neck. So many of his dreams are about drowning, but not this one; there is no panic, no sense of inescapable submersion, only a kind of weightlessness and ease. A baptism, not a murder scene. 

His head feels light, aired-out somehow, as if someone has finally flung open the windows keeping in his fever and let the wind carry it away. Downriver, the sun cracks open like an egg against the horizon, spilling early morning light into the sky.

The river laps softly at him. Small, cool waves kiss his ankles, his hip bones, his ribs, the jut of his shoulder blades. The river finds everywhere he is sharp, eases him out of jaggedness with the quiet patience of water smoothing out stone.

Fish dart by, glinting silver and gold and sapphire, but Will is not here for them. He has no fishing equipment, has crafted no flies. He is only here for himself. To feel himself. To _be_ himself. 

Far in the distance, he sees the feathered stag. It slowly raises the huge bulk of its head to meet Will’s gaze, and Will is not afraid. Here in this dream, here in this water that will not drown him, the stag is not a harbinger of death but a messenger of peace. It huffs a long breath into the golden light.

And then Will’s eyes open. There is a strange kind of desolation sitting hollow in his chest. He misses the river, the stag, the feeling of quietude. He has no idea where he is or how much time has passed.

Light. Light and air and color. Nothing more than that at first, as if he’s still in his dream, still in the river. This thought dissipates the heaviness of his longing; maybe he doesn’t have to miss the river at all. Maybe the blurry shapes around him, the gentle breeze ruffling his curls, the strong, steady heat folded around his hand—maybe it’s all part of the same languid, honeyed dream.

He’s never had good dreams before.

He starts to close his eyes again, ready to let the sweet waves take him, when he hears a sharp intake of breath and feels the warmth against his palm become a tight grip.

“Will. You’re awake.”

Hannibal’s voice is like the sun burning through a thick scrim of morning fog. Will’s heavy eyes fly wide open. That voice, he thinks, could guide him out of hell. 

How many times has Will dreamt of waking up to Hannibal beside him? And now, as Will’s eyes focus, here he is—every cruel, blessed inch of him—folded elegantly into a chair at Will’s bedside, clasping Will’s hand.

For several long moments all Will can do is stare.

Hannibal gazes back at him, those predator’s eyes so unexpectedly soft above the sharp, high slash of his cheekbones. 

“It’s good to see your eyes again, Will,” Hannibal says finally. “They have always told me so much about you.”

“And what—” Will suddenly struggles for both air and words. Something electronic beeps ominously nearby. “What are they telling you now?”

Hannibal smiles with astonishing fondness, his own eyes crinkling at the corners. Will’s heartbeat kicks sharply upwards and something beeps again, more loudly this time. 

One broad hand still firmly holding Will’s, Hannibal spreads the other across Will’s chest, gentling him like a wild animal. “That you, little wandering lamb, need more rest.”

Hannibal’s hand directly over Will’s wildly thumping heart is almost too much to bear. “Hannibal,” Will manages. “What keeps beeping?” 

He finally wrenches his eyes away from Hannibal’s, though his very bones cry out in protest at the separation. The blurry shapes around him resolve themselves into medical equipment—a hospital room’s worth, though Will is certain they aren’t in a hospital. He is wired up to an IV bag, a heart monitor, and several other drips and drugs and machines he can’t identify.

Hannibal watches Will’s gaze shift. “You alarm the equipment when your heartbeat and blood pressure increase so dramatically, Will.” He gestures. “An induced sleep, at first, to allow the brain to rest. Regular steroid injections. Antiviral and antibiotic therapies, as we cannot be certain of the infection’s root cause.” 

This sounds, absurdly, like Hannibal announcing each component of a feast before serving it. Will laughs shakily. 

“Are you going to explain the _symbolism_ of each course, Hannibal?” he asks, voice raspy and half-caught in the back of his throat. Hannibal simply looks at him, that soft sinner’s mouth pursed slightly.

“Tell me, Will,” he says. “Do you think there is any meaning greater than keeping you alive?”

“You’ve wanted me dead before,” Will can’t help pointing out.

“No, no,” Hannibal says, almost chidingly. “No, Will. Your death was something I—”

“Had a professional curiosity about?”

Hannibal smiles. “At times. But Will, a caterpillar inside a cocoon does not merely transform. First, it must die. Disintegrate—”

“So I’m a...sack of goo?” Will finds he is becoming bolder in his interruptions, secure in the knowledge that Hannibal will always allow them.

“Only then, of course, can it be reborn. Only then can it truly _become_ ,” Hannibal continues smoothly. “Don’t you see, Will? First it must die.”

“So I _was_ a sack of goo.”

Hannibal tips his head. “In a sense. But not anymore.” His voice betrays no emotion, but Will can see a glint of delight in his eyes. “Not anymore.”

Hannibal leans closer and brushes Will’s sweat-damp curls from his forehead with soft, soothing strokes. In Hannibal’s office, his touch had felt revelatory, a fiery benediction. Even just moments ago, Hannibal’s hand on Will’s chest felt like stars shooting through his bloodstream. Now, though, Hannibal touching him feels—not ordinary, precisely, for how could it ever be—but natural. Organic.

Real.

Hannibal’s eyebrows furrow slightly. “Tell me, Will,” he says carefully. “Do you trust me?”

Will abruptly feels like he’s being given an exam. “If I say yes, you’ll tell me that I shouldn’t.”

Hannibal nods, a teacher proud of his pupil. “Very good. You shouldn’t. But I’m afraid that for the foreseeable future you must. Things are going to start happening very quickly, Will, and I’ll need you to be prepared.”  
  
“Prepared for—” 

“But for now, Will,” Hannibal says in a tone that brooks no argument, “I need you to rest.” He stands as if to go, but must see some type of panic fly into Will’s eyes, for he adds quietly, “I won’t leave you until you’re asleep.”

“And even then?” Will knows he sounds petulant, but having awakened to Hannibal once he can no longer bear the thought of the alternative.

Hannibal looks down at him with gentle scrutiny, then resumes his position in the bedside chair. This time he takes both of Will's hands in both of his own. “Not even then will I leave you, my lamb. Not even then.”

And the voice that could guide Will Graham out of hell sings him back into sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

When Will wakes up again, he can smell the ocean. Hannibal, true to his word, appears not to have left the room in hours; his ever-immaculate appearance is just rumpled enough to suggest he’s slept at Will’s bedside, upright in his chair.

“Will,” Hannibal says as soon as Will opens his eyes. “Welcome once more to the land of the living.”

Will grimaces as he tries to sit up. “It’s a vaguely familiar country.” He takes in another breath of subtly briny air. “Speaking of—”

“You know, Will, you’re not the only fugitive to appear unannounced in my office,” Hannibal cuts in, conversationally. 

All questions of where Hannibal might have him secreted away evaporate like mist. “Abigail.” Her name feels like barbed wire in his throat.

Hannibal nods. “She had a habit of scaling the wall of her facility. Another resourceful soul, though perhaps not quite the lost little lamb you are.”

“Abigail,” Will repeats dully. “Very resourceful. Like one father taught her to be. Until another father—”

“Killed her?” This is a new voice, one so sudden and unexpected that Will feels like he’s been kicked in the stomach. He struggles to steady his breathing as the monitors beep wildly.

But he can’t steady his breathing. He can’t steady anything at all, because the voice he just heard is Abigail’s.

“Shhh,” Hannibal soothes, as if the entire world hasn’t just rewritten itself in an instant. He leans closer to adjust the sensors on Will’s bare chest. “You still have much resting to do.”

“ _Hannibal_ —” 

“He did kill me, you know,” the voice that cannot possibly belong to anyone but Abigail continues. “It was actually pretty fun.”

“She was a very good girl,” Hannibal says fondly, looking away from Will for the first time. 

As if choreographed in advance—later it will occur to Will that it probably was _—_ Abigail steps out from the shadows behind Hannibal. 

She can’t be here. She is here. She’s dead. She's alive. Will must be dreaming. Will knows, for once, that he’s wide awake. And although he has become more inured to such contradictions of late, although his mind is clearer than it has been in a long time, he still can't process it. Waves start to roar again at the back of his skull.

“I don’t—but I—” He swallows hard, blinks harder, almost expecting Abigail to vanish between one moment and the next. She remains where she is. He can see her chest rise and fall with her breath, can practically hear her heart beating, can _feel_ the life in her, vital and true. “I—” he tries again.

“You threw up my ear, yeah, I know. That was a gross detail.” Abigail rolls her eyes in Hannibal’s direction. “Drama queen.”

“Abigail,” Hannibal says, “Perhaps at some point we might let poor Will complete a sentence.”

“Why?” she asks, settling herself primly at the foot of Will’s bed. “It’s so much easier to do it for him.” Then she aims a broad grin directly at Will, and the sight of it cracks something open inside his chest. “Hi.”

“Hi,” is all Will can manage. He stares at her, willing something—anything—to start making sense.

“Is that all you’re gonna say?” Her voice is lilting, teasing, lighter than Will has ever heard it.

“Abigail,” Hannibal says, a gentle warning. “Will is, I think, rather overwhelmed.”

Will is, in fact, so overwhelmed that the word seems inadequate. "Hanni—"

“Will, everything you are seeing right now is entirely real.” Hannibal reaches out a hand to stroke Will’s cheek. “Don’t you understand? The teacup has begun to put itself back together.”

Abigail smiles, a little shakily, then mutters something that sounds very much like “let poor Will complete a sentence.”

“Hush, my dear,” Hannibal instructs her, gleaming eyes on Will. “We are—”

“Having a moment? Yeah, you have a lot of those. Come _on_. I’m hungry.”

Hannibal flashes a reproving glance at Abigail, but then nods in agreement. “Abigail is correct, Will. We must get some food in you. We have much to discuss, and I never advise doing so on an empty stomach.”

But suddenly all Will can see is where Abigail’s sleek dark hair is pulled closely against one side of her face. Where her ear used to be. The ear that he—days ago? weeks?—coughed up out of his throat and into his kitchen sink. _On an empty stomach_. He’s not sure he’ll ever be able to have a full stomach again.

“No,” Will croaks, and Hannibal looks genuinely startled.

“Will—”

“ _No_ ,” Will repeats, putting all the breath he can muster behind the word. His own vehemence feels foreign to him after so much weakness, so much haziness, so much lost time. He’d almost forgotten what it is to be angry, the nervous, propulsive energy it sends crackling through his veins. “I can’t eat, Hannibal, how do you expect me to _eat_ right now, I’m looking at someone who is supposed to be dead, someone whose fucking _ear_ I threw up—” 

Something else Hannibal said echoes in his mind: _the teacup has begun to put itself back together_. Begun. Only begun. “And you’re not telling me everything,” he realizes out loud. “ _Hannibal_. Jesus Christ. What aren’t you telling me?”

Hannibal barely blinks, but Abigail looks abruptly miserable. “The thing is—” she starts, voice raw. Hannibal cuts her off with a glance.

“The ‘thing’ is, Will,” he repeats steadily. “We’re going to have to turn you in.”


	4. Chapter 4

This is what it is to love Hannibal, Will thinks: Your head in the lion’s mouth.

Then another thought hits him, cold and clear as an icicle through the heart: This was always part of the plan.

When Hannibal confessed Will’s encephalitis, he was urgent to the point of unsettling, rushing to get the truth out faster than Will had ever heard him speak. There is no trace of that urgency now, no hint of rawness or desperation. Hannibal is the puppet master once more, unruffled and unrelenting.

“I thought you were—were _rescuing_ me,” Will says, aware of how absurd that sounds. He is no prince in a tower, Hannibal certainly no gallant knight. And yet—

“We are,” Abigail says, adjusting and readjusting the scarf around her neck. Panic flashes in her eyes and she rounds on Hannibal. “We _are_ , aren’t we?”

“We are,” Hannibal confirms without looking at her. “But tell me, Will, do you think they’d stop hunting for you? We must ensure that their attention turns permanently elsewhere. We must ensure that you can remain safe.”

“You’re keeping me safe by sending me to prison,” Will says flatly.

“Not technically _prison_ ,” Abigail mutters.

“No. No, of course not. Not prison.” Will scrubs at his face with his hands. “The Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.”

“Only for a short time, Will,” Hannibal says, as if this is reassurance. “While I see to it that you can live in peace.”

“See to it—” Will laughs, a bitter, choking sound. He realizes he is on his feet, trailing sensors and IV lines like a fish tangled up in wire. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? _See to it_. Like we’re all just—papers to be tidied on your desk. Loose ends to be tied up.”

“Trust me, Will,” Hannibal says. “When I want to tie you up, you will know.”

“Abigail,” Will says. “I think you should go.”

“I think I should stay,” she shoots back. “This concerns me, too, doesn’t it?”

“Not this part,” Will says. “Hannibal, what the fuck are you playing at?”

“I’m not ‘playing at’ anything, Will. Your life is not a game to me.”

Will laughs again. “Isn’t it?”

Hannibal refuses the bait. “No.”

“Abigail,” Will repeats. 

She rolls her eyes dramatically but goes, slamming the door behind her for good measure.

Will flinches briefly at the sound, but neither he nor Hannibal truly register her departure. They are locked in a stare that could bring down buildings. Will can no longer be sure who is the predator, who the prey.

“And so that _you_ can live in peace, of course,” Will says. “Don’t pretend this is altruism, Dr. Lecter.”

Hannibal has the audacity to look wounded. “Are we so suddenly no longer on a first-name basis?”

Will ignores this. “It might be a—a _side effect_ , my exoneration. But it’s—incidental. The only thing that matters to you is your own freedom.”

“Will,” Hannibal says with excruciating patience. “You cannot possibly still believe that to be true.”

Will ignores this, too. “I told Jack Crawford once,” he says slowly. “When we went to see Abel Gideon. I told him I always get nervous going into those places. Afraid they won’t let me back out again, I told him. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I won’t leave you here.’”

In one ferally graceful motion, Hannibal steps forward and grasps Will’s face in his hands. One thumb traces the edge of Will’s jaw, the other rests on Will’s thudding pulse. Will is certain he’s stopped breathing. “Will, listen to me. Nor will I leave you there. It was never my intention to do so. I will come back for you, Will. You must believe me.”

Will squeezes his eyes shut as if warding off a hallucination. His face feels tense and hot beneath Hannibal’s hands. “Say it again,” he hisses through clenched teeth. “ _Hannibal_. Say you’re coming back for me.”

Hannibal kisses him square on the mouth. 


	5. Chapter 5

With all that has already come to pass between Will and Hannibal, Will’s reeling brain wonders how a kiss can still feel so shockingly intimate. How it can still feel so like much _more_ than anything that preceded it. How it can still feel like it’s kicking the heart straight out of his chest. 

But it does.

Hannibal’s mouth on Will’s is poison and cure, air and drowning, familiarity and terror. It is the center of the universe and the universe is collapsing in on itself. It is a star and the star has gone supernova. 

Will can’t fathom how he has ever done anything but kiss Hannibal, how he ever _will_ do anything but kiss Hannibal, how anything else in the entire course of human existence has ever mattered as much as him kissing Hannibal.

Hannibal’s hands slide upwards, long clever fingers tangling in Will’s curls. He pulls gently, tipping Will’s head back and baring his neck to the beast.

The motion brings something else jarringly to mind. “Abigail,” Will chokes out as Hannibal trails searing kisses down the column of his exposed throat. “Shouldn’t we—”

Hannibal nips at Will’s lower jaw. “She’s a big girl, Will,” he murmurs. “She can look after herself for a time.”

“I thought we didn’t have any,” Will says. “Time, I mean. I thought we were out of time. I thought we had to—”

Again, blessedly, his words are stopped by Hannibal’s teeth on his skin. “Soon, little lamb,” Hannibal says into the hollow of Will’s collarbone. “Soon we will have much to attend to. But not just yet.”

“Hannibal, wait.” His body screams at him to _just stop talking_ , but it suddenly seems terribly important that he say this out loud. “Hannibal.” He takes in a huge gulp of air, trying and failing to steady himself, trying and failing to breathe at all. “I—I love you. I—you know that, right? I’m in love with you. Completely fucking in love with you. And I don’t know if you—if—”

“Tell me, Will.” Will can feel the curve of Hannibal’s smile like a knife against his neck. “Have you been operating under the belief that I treat all of my patients this way?” He pulls back for one brief, excruciating moment, shining eyes meeting Will’s.

Will feels his cheeks flush. “I thought I wasn't your patient." Hannibal raises an eyebrow. "I don’t—I, uh. Well. Probably not all of them, no.”

“Will,” Hannibal says calmly. “I’ve loved you since I brought you a home-cooked breakfast and you informed me you failed to find me interesting.” He slides a hand out from Will’s hair and strokes it down Will’s bare chest. “My sweet anxious lamb. Was there ever truly a time when you doubted our love for each other?” 

Will feels a soft tug and realizes Hannibal is peeling the medical sensors from his skin. More surprising than nearly anything else is seeing Hannibal simply toss them to the floor, heedless of the clutter. “Don’t you want to put those—”

“Will,” Hannibal says, and drops a soft kiss on the corner of Will’s mouth. “Can you do something for me?”

“Anything,” Will says immediately, startled by the raw desperation in his own voice.

Hannibal presses his palm directly over Will’s heart. “ _Exhale_.”


	6. Chapter 6

Will lets out a long shaky breath, thinking as he does that he’s never breathed properly until this exact moment. An entire life spent clenched tight as a fist until Hannibal came along to pry him open, to teach him how to breathe.

And then Hannibal is kissing him again and breathing seems like a distant, alien concept, something only other people do. Hannibal is kissing him, and Hannibal’s hands are in his hair, and he can feel Hannibal’s heart beating, and everything is _Hannibal_ , _Hannibal_ , _Hannibal_.

“Hannibal,” Will says, out loud this time. Hannibal’s teeth are grazing his collarbone and Hannibal’s fingers are on his hips and Will doesn’t know why he keeps stopping this surreal miracle of an occurrence, but his brain is working out of concert with his body and he can’t slow down his thoughts. “ _Dr. Lecter_.” 

This startles both of them, and Will immediately regrets it. Thankfully it only takes half a beat for Hannibal to raise his head and smile lazily, a predator indulging his prey.

“Yes, Mr. Graham?”

“You have to let—we have to do it together,” Will says in a rush. “I mean—not, uh, _this_. But the...whatever you’re planning. Together. Are you listening to me, Hannibal? Let me do it with you. You have to let me do it with you.”

Will can practically see the flames of hell dancing in Hannibal’s eyes. “Why, Will,” he murmurs, stroking Will’s cheek with exquisite tenderness. “I thought you’d never ask.”

A wild, reckless hope flares up in Will’s chest. To plan with Hannibal, hunt with Hannibal, _be_ with Hannibal, instead of sitting in a cell—

“But it mustn’t be this one.”

The hope gutters out. Will flinches back from Hannibal’s touch, and raw human hurt replaces the flames in Hannibal’s eyes. For a long, painful moment, it seems neither of them know what to say.

Hannibal recovers first. “Be sensible, Will. We must work to exonerate you, not embroil you further.”

Will scoffs. “I’m already pretty fucking _embroiled_ , aren’t I?” But he knows the fight is already lost, that in fact it was never a fight at all but a play, written by the devil himself. Hannibal may be as skilled at improvisation as everything else he turns his hand to, but Will is all too aware that it’s not his preferred approach. 

The fact that Hannibal is the reason Will needs exoneration in the first place doesn’t seem to merit voicing. 

And Will doesn’t know what to do now, after this brief, impulsive attempt to change his own preordained fate. He doesn’t know what to do now but distract himself, forget himself, lose himself, and the only thing he can lose himself in is Hannibal. Not Hannibal as puppet master, not Hannibal as some omnipotent creature out of myth, but Hannibal as _human._ Body and soul, flesh and blood. Hannibal as want, as need, as lust, as—and god help Will for it— _love_. 

Will grabs the front of Hannibal’s shirt and kisses him hard, kisses him like pulling a trigger. He tries to tug Hannibal towards the bed, but Hannibal takes him by the wrists and leans gently away. “No, my lamb,” he says, eyes dark. “Not like this.”

Will honestly thinks he might die at another refusal. “Not like _what_?” he spits, abruptly furious. “Like you’re about to send me to an _asylum_? Like I stand accused of crimes I didn’t commit because _you wanted it that way_? Like they might lock me up in there and give _you_ the key to swallow? If there were ever a time to go out with a bang, Hannibal, I think this might be it.”

“No,” Hannibal repeats softly.

The noise Will makes is pure animal frustration. “It— _amuses_ you to say no to me, doesn’t it, Doctor? You are truly determined to take everything from me.”

“Only so I can give it all back.” At this, Will can’t help rolling his eyes. Hannibal’s voice sharpens. “Listen to me, Will. Temptations cannot always be allowed to run wild. In treacherous times, they must be controlled, not indulged.”

“Hannibal,” Will grits out through clenched teeth. “There is no one on this entire goddamn planet who indulges temptations like you do.”

“When the time is right,” is Hannibal’s only reply.

“When the time is—” Will laughs bitterly. “Okay. Sure. When the time is right, Hannibal. According to whose clock? Certainly not mine, you saw to that, no one believes I even know what a clock fucking _looks_ like—”

Hannibal kisses him again, and some distant part of Will knows he should be angry, should find this patronizing, should not let Hannibal defang him so quickly, but every other part of Will screams _yes more yes_. Hannibal still has a hold on one of Will's wrists, and with agonizing care he reaches to pin Will's hands behind his back. Will nearly falls apart on the spot.

“Hannibal, give me something,” he pleads against Hannibal's mouth. He is long past the point of caring how desperate he sounds. “I need _something_. To hold on to. When I’m—when I’m in there, I need to remember that there’s a...light. At the end of the tunnel.”

“Will, my darling.” Hannibal nips at Will's bottom lip, quick and soft. “I promise you. We will live the rest of our lives in the light at the end of the tunnel. But first we must make it through the darkness.”


	7. Chapter 7

Suddenly Will is sobbing like a child, shaking and heaving and clinging to Hannibal’s shirt. It’s unlike him, to fall apart quite so spectacularly and so visibly, but all his life he’s been bottled up and Hannibal has pulled the cork. He can feel himself spilling over, a river surging past its banks.

Hannibal simply holds him, hands stroking soothing circles on his bare back, and lets him cry. Will knows they must be out of time, were probably out of time hours ago, but Hannibal doesn’t press or rush, doesn’t tell him to pull himself together, doesn’t psychoanalyze. _You won’t like me when I’m psychoanalyzed_. That particular bit of memory usually makes Will laugh, but right now all he can do is glimpse it through a thick fog. 

Will can’t be sure how much time passes like that, the two of them standing together while he cries all over Hannibal’s beautiful shirt, before Hannibal pulls back from him slightly. Will nearly whimpers out loud at the threat of separation, but Hannibal keeps his hands firm around him, only leaning far enough away to be able to look Will in the face.

“Will,” Hannibal says quietly, “I need you to listen to me very carefully.” He waits for Will to meet his eyes before continuing. “You are not insane, and I am not leaving you there. I’m coming back for you.”

“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Will says faintly, trying to remember what it feels like to smile. Already the shreds of joy, the licks of heat, that Hannibal’s kisses stirred up in him are leaching away. Already hope and humor feel so very, very distant. 

Hannibal’s eyes narrow slightly, no longer predator sizing up prey but doctor examining patient. “Will, tell me you’ve heard me. That you’ll remember. While you’re…”

Will doesn’t think he’s once in his life heard Hannibal trail off mid-sentence—can’t imagine that Hannibal _has_ ever trailed off mid-sentence—but apparently there are things that even Hannibal Lecter can't bear to say.

He doesn’t need to say it. They both know how the sentence ends.

Will nods once, twice, more to convince himself than Hannibal. “I’ll remember,” he says, though it might well be an empty assurance. Will can’t be certain of anything he’ll think or feel or do once he’s inside a cell in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Once he’s living inside one of his greatest fears.

“Do you remember the exercises?” Hannibal asks. “Will. When you were losing time, when you were sleepwalking. Do you remember what I had you do?”

“My name is Will Graham,” Will recites. “It’s...whatever the fuck o’clock, and I’m in the arms of a man who will either be my salvation or my doom, if he ever decides which is more amusing to him.”

A ghost of a smile on Hannibal’s lips. “That’s my good boy.”

“But I don’t want to—” Will swallows hard, trying not to start sobbing again. “I don’t _want_ to remember where I am. I don’t want to— _ground_ myself. Not... _there_. I’ll need to go...somewhere else.”

“And you can do that, too,” Hannibal says, voice heartbreakingly gentle. “You can go anywhere you like, inside your mind. Tell me, Will, where would you like to go?”

Will leans forward so his head is on Hannibal’s chest again, and Hannibal pulls him in tight. “The river,” Will says against Hannibal’s heartbeat. “I want to go to the river.”

Hannibal kisses the top of his head. “Then, my darling, that's where you will go.” Will feels Hannibal’s chest lift with a sharp breath before Hannibal says, “Come. Let’s get you ready, and you can tell me about the river.”

Will tells Hannibal about the river, then Hannibal tells Will about the river; together they weave a dreamscape, a place in Will’s mind palace where he can be safe.

Later he’ll realize that Hannibal must have slipped him something; most of what happens next is, mercifully, a blur. He can’t meet Jack Crawford’s eyes, can’t look at the emotion drawn tightly across Alana Bloom’s face. He feels like he did when his brain was on fire, like he’s floating through a nightmare just beyond his control.

As they’re putting him in his cell, spikes of raw panic start to shatter the protective numbness and Will reaches desperately for Hannibal. Instinctive, unthinking, like drowning and reaching for shore. Hannibal shakes his head so tightly it’s nearly imperceptible, but it’s enough to catch Will up, to remind him where he is and what he cannot do.

He aches for Hannibal’s comfort, Hannibal’s hands in his hair, Hannibal murmuring _I’m coming back for you_ , _I’m coming back for you_. Now, here, when he needs that comfort the most, it's out of reach. That fact seems crueler than nearly anything else.

He can’t bring himself to watch Hannibal and the others as they go. As they leave him there. Like Jack once promised he wouldn’t, like Hannibal now swears he isn’t.

Will is suddenly feeling so much that it barely seems he’s feeling anything at all: a total system overload. He knows the walls are waiting to close in on him, knows if he stops for a heartbeat too long to examine his own thoughts that any chance he has of making it through this will be over. 

All he can do is close his eyes and press play on the Hannibal in his mind. _You are standing in the river…_


	8. Chapter 8

Will can’t breathe.

He’s trying to get to the river—he can _hear_ the river—but the walls are closing in on him and everything has gone dark and he _can’t breathe_.

“You can do better than this, my love,” he hears Hannibal say. “Remember? _Exhale_.”

And Will swears he can feel Hannibal’s hand over his heart.

The walls are still too close and the darkness still too complete and the river still too far away, but with Hannibal’s steadying hand on him Will slowly remembers how to breathe.

 _Exhale_. It’s always that part that’s hardest for him. Inhaling he’s good at, pulling himself tightly inward, retreating. What he struggles with is the letting go. _Exhale, little lamb_. 

“Hannibal?” he calls, unsure if words are coming out of his mouth or simply floating in his head, in the air, in the impenetrable blackness.

Nothing.

Right, he thinks. Of course Mind Palace Hannibal would be just as infuriating as Actual Hannibal.

But then: “You can do it without me, Will. I know you can. You are standing in the river.”

“I am standing in the river,” Will says out loud, still surrounded by darkness. “My name is Will Graham, and I still don’t know what _fucking_ time it is, and I am standing in the river.”

This time he doesn’t hear Hannibal so much as feel him. _Good boy._

Will lets out an uneven breath. He can do this. He can go wherever he likes in his mind, just as Hannibal promised him.

And then he _is_ standing in the river, Hannibal a breath behind him, sunshine glinting off the water and a crisp breeze ruffling their hair. Will blinks at the sudden burst of light and color and air.

“I thought you were teaching me how to fish,” Hannibal says, as if already mid-conversation.

Will clicks his tongue. “Patience, Dr. Lecter. Patience.”

“I have my hands full enough with one patient,” Hannibal says, the lilt in his voice suggesting he’s shamelessly pleased with himself.

Will groans. “Your jokes are even worse in here.”

“It could be argued that, as this is your mind palace, it’s _your_ jokes that are worse.”

Will smiles and shakes his head. “Do you want me to teach you how to fish or not? Because you’re not making it easy.”

“Here.” Hannibal slides his arms around Will’s waist, holding him from behind, and places one hand atop Will’s on the fishing rod. “Does that help?”

“No,” Will says, trying to sound stern but fighting a laugh. “For multiple reasons.”

“Name them,” Hannibal murmurs into his neck.

“One,” Will begins, and Hannibal nips at his jaw. “This isn’t a romantic comedy in which I’m teaching you something as an excuse to put my arms around you.”

“Two.” Another bite from Hannibal. “If it _were_ a romantic comedy in which I was teaching you something as an excuse to put my arms around you, we'd have it the wrong way around.”

“Three—” A third, deeper bite before he’s even finished the word. Will hisses. “ _Three_ , you are very fucking distracting.”

“One,” Hannibal says, and kisses Will’s jaw. “I find this tremendously romantic. Two,” he continues, nuzzling over another bitten spot, “you in my arms could never be the wrong way around.”

“Three?” Will prompts. His skin hums where Hannibal’s lips have been.

Hannibal bites him, hard, right where he’d just kissed. Will’s heart thuds in his chest. “Three, perhaps I enjoy distracting you.”

“Perhaps,” Will says dryly. “ _Perhaps_ it’s one of your favorite hobbies.” 

“I enjoy sharing my hobbies with you,” Hannibal says with a sly smile. Water laps gently at their knees.

“And I’m trying to share one of mine with you,” Will says. “But you seem disinclined to wait long enough for things to get... _amusing_.”

“I excel at waiting,” Hannibal objects. "I waited a very long time for you, Will."

“You don’t _wait_ , Hannibal, you _lie_ in wait. Like a lion. All— _coiled_. Impatient. Impulsive. Fishing is about a different kind of patience.”

“Impulsive?” Hannibal places a melodramatic hand to Will’s heart, his own chest pressed close against Will’s spine. “You wound me, lamb. Wasn’t it you who called me a puppet master?”

“Yes,” Will concedes. “When you’re inclined to be. But when you want something, you take it. There’s a—a neck to break, you break it.”

Hannibal’s lips curl in amusement against Will’s neck. “Did you intend for that to rhyme?”

Will lets out a shaky laugh. “No. I guess this is just what you do to me, Hannibal.”

“Encourage you to explore your poetic sensibilities?”

“Make me a fool.”

“Then let us be fools together,” Hannibal says. Will relaxes back against him, but he can suddenly see darkness eddying at their feet, tugging him away.

“I don’t want to go back,” Will says, unable to keep the whine out of his voice.

Hannibal kisses Will's hair, his temple, his cheek, the curve of his ear. “I know, lamb. But I’ll be right here. I’ll always be right here.”

Then, before he can do anything to stop it, Will’s eyes open, and both Hannibal and the river are gone.


	9. Chapter 9

For a brief, miraculous moment, a perfect afterimage of Hannibal remains in front of Will. _An imago is an image of a loved one, buried in the unconscious, carried with us all our lives._

Will blinks with a reluctance so primal it hurts, his entire body instinctively fighting the loss of even an imaginary Hannibal.

But when his eyes drag back open, Hannibal is still there.

“Hello, Will,” Hannibal says. “Can you trust me one more time?”

And then everything goes black. 

Before Will can even take a breath, emergency lights hum to life, crackling dimly along the corridor. Will blinks, eyes adjusting in rapid succession to the sudden darkness and the equally sudden return of wan, flickering light. 

Hannibal is still there.

Will blinks again, rubs hard at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Spots dance before his vision, but Hannibal is still there. Hannibal is, in fact, lifting a key out of his pocket and fitting it carefully to the door of Will’s cell.

Will blinks yet again, scrubs at his face more fiercely. “I—we—you—” _You have to go before they find you here_ , is what he’s thinking, but he can’t bring himself to say it. Not when he’s finally starting to believe that the Hannibal before him might actually be real. 

“We won’t be disturbed,” is all Hannibal says in reply. He smiles, but his eyes hold a glint of what almost looks like real fear. Will suddenly notices a smear of blood above Hannibal’s right eyebrow, a jagged scratch down his cheek, bruises blooming faintly just above his collar. His sleeves are shoved up to his elbows with uncharacteristic carelessness, revealing more bruises ringing his elegant wrists and a deep gouge across one forearm. He fought his way here, Will thinks, and messily. He’s improvising, and not particularly well.

Abruptly, yanking Will from his near-reverent cataloguing of Hannibal’s injuries, the key clatters to the concrete floor. Will and Hannibal stare down at it. It is both so mundane and so extraordinary—Hannibal making a tiny, human mistake—that Will has to fight a mad impulse to laugh. Hannibal _does_ laugh, a small and brittle thing, and bends to retrieve the key. “It seems I am not at my finest,” he says softly, almost apologetically, and returns the key to the lock. Will can see now that Hannibal’s hands—surgeon’s hands, puppet master’s hands—are shaking. Will can’t imagine a sight more disconcerting.

“Hannibal,” Will says. He slips a hand through the bars and wraps it around Hannibal’s bruised wrist, steadying him. Together they manage to unlock the cell door, and Hannibal nearly falls through it, stumbling directly into Will.

Will doesn’t know if he wants to kiss him or throttle him. “What happened to the _plan_?” he asks instead, trying to hold onto a shaky sense of bitterness even as he breathes Hannibal in like a dying fire eating up fuel. “The careful considerations, the being _sensible_?”

Hannibal’s face is a shipwreck of emotion, twisted with a kind of bewildered anguish. “I couldn’t bear it. Oh, my Will. I simply couldn’t bear it. My Will, my love, my sweet lamb. Can you ever forgive me?”

And all Will can do is stand there, stunned, as Hannibal Lecter falls apart in his arms. 


End file.
